Spotify users have expressed their anger over track titles in Chinese being automatically translated to English on the streaming platform.
A Singaporean user by the name of ‘cdiony’ raised the issue on Spotify’s community forum, titling it “Chinese songs title suddenly translated to ENGLISH ??”. The user explained that due to its automatic translation, “most of the song titles are not recognisable” – citing this issue as a “deal breaker” after having been a Spotify premium user for a long time.
Other Spotify users in the thread rallied together in support of ‘cdiony’s’ frustrations. Another user, ‘Melbourne’ wrote that “this is horrible and I would unsubscribe. It makes searching for Chinese music impossible.”
A comment by ‘burningred’ expressed that one of their favourite album’s name was automatically changed to Pinyin – a romanized spelling for transliterating Chinese. They cited it as “incredibly inconvenient, not to mention unreadable.” ‘burningred’ also shared that they had spoken to Spotify’s support staff, and that “apparently it’s a new feature they’re piloting’.
On July 19, ‘Vasil’, a moderator of Spotify’s community thread shared: “Hey folks! In connection to the recent test for the way multilingual data is used – we are working to revert the translated titles! The change should be reflected soon. Clear your cache if you continue to experience issues. Thanks & cheers!”
Five hours later, community manager ‘Loneliest_Cabin’ explained that “it may take as long as 24 hours to see the changes take effect for all languages. By this time 20th July everyone should see it.”
It is currently unclear if the changes have taken effect yet.